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RSGB AFS CW & SSB Contests

Peter — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:00:26 +0000

During the last two weekends it’s been the RSGB Affiliated Societies Contests 2012, 80m CW and SSB at first I wasn’t really setting out to take part, just considered giving away some points to those giving it a serious bash, but even so was easy to make a good amount of QSOs in an afternoon.

The first leg was CW, I will admit I know very little CW, I can make out my callsign and 59 but that really is my limit so I setup MixW and CW Skimmer to act as my ears, which like normal worked perfectly. After 5 QSOs, I got into the flow of things and started working my way up the CW portion of the band, within two hours I managed to work 58 QSOs. Conditions seemed reasonable and every station I called came back.

The QSO amount was also an improvement over 2011 where I’d worked 43 stations using a 80m Quarter Wave Inverted L so least I managed to increase the total for this year slightly.

This weekend saw the SSB leg of the contest, at dead on 14:00 I worked Rob (M0VFC) operating G3PYE and then started to work my way back down the band. Which worked well slowly getting more contacts in the log, there was the usual QRM from stations splattering each other but even so there was only two stations who I didn’t manage to work, this might be due to conditions, QRM or my antenna not being that great even so the half size G5RV with 80m traps worked well.

I wasn’t worried after two hours S&P, I’d put 60 QSOs in the logbook and called it a day. What I did learn was that I needed to sort out keying the FT950’s DVK within Win-Test so I’ll be sorting some LUA scripts out in due course as it will be handy for other contests as well.

Overall very enjoyable two weekends, now need to look at what other contests I want to take part in this year.

RSGB HF CC CW

Peter — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:35:52 +0000

On Wednesday evening it was the RSGB HF CC (CW Leg), at first I wasn’t really planning on taking part but as the evening panned out I had nothing better to-do so armed with cider I turned the rig on and loaded up MixW and CW Skimmer and off we went for an hour and a half.. after the first 5 QSOs I got into the swing of it and started to work up the band working who-ever was strong.

I was surprised how well the half-size G5RV and the traps where doing at the end I had 41 contacts in the log! Maybe I’ll take part in these mini contests more often.

RSGB AFS CW

Peter — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 17:28:48 +0000

Decided to have a dabble in the RSGB AFS CW contest this afternoon, I will admit I did use MixW to take care of some of the decoding although I was picking up the odd letter!

Total QSOs: 43

Equipment: Yaesu FT950, 80m Quarter Wave Inverted L , MixW

National Field Day at G5LO/P

Peter — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 17:55:59 +0000

The weekend is coming to an end after playing host to the annual CW national field day, although not really being a CW operator like normal I helped the Oxford & District ARS setup for the event from late Friday afternoon to get the antennas setup and ready for operating and also got a bit sun burnt due to the lovely weather that day.

Field Day Station View

Then returned back during Saturday while Dad (M3JFM) and myself were out cycling enjoying the Oxfordshire/Edge of Buckinghamshire country side, most of the station was finally setup when we arrived although the generator died just as we arrived on site 2 hours before the contest started thankfully we managed to get one hour before the start, returning home later that evening via a pub stop to refuel for the 10miles cycle home.

Friday team busy at work!

During the weekend I also managed with the help of MixW to work 38 field day stations mixed across 80/40/20/15/10m which I was more then happy with, hopefully next year will be just as good!

You can find the rest of the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/m3php/sets/72157624080291655/

RSGB 80m AFS (CW)

Peter — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:59:35 +0000

It wasn’t till Tim (G4VXE) sent a tweet on Twitter that he’d just worked 20 qsos in the AFS that I remembered about, so I switched from 20m as I wasn’t working much at the time and decided to give 80m a try, normally I find working anything on 80m pretty hard going with the Windom.

But today it seemed different I was calling people and they were coming back to be and before I knew it I had a good few QSOs in the logbook. I’ll admit I didn’t decode any of the Morse myself I had software doing all the work but still had an enjoyable time giving away some points.

End results:

Total QSOs: 47
Total Time: 2 hours
Equipment: Yaesu FT950, 80m CW Special Windom and LDG AT200PRO auto atu.

ARRL DX 10m Contest

Peter — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:11:20 +0000

This weekend was the ARRL 10m contest, I knew well in advance that this was in no way a serious contest with conditions in there current state, but even so I had a tune over 10m Saturday afternoon to see what I could hear there was a couple of weak EAs on SSB, but lower down the band on CW was EA4TX and EA4KA who both came back first call.

So I was at least pleased to get two QSOs but I wont be winning any awards for this one.